“Meaning…?”
“Is this the start of twenty questions?”
“It can be. We’re up to three.”
“Fine, Patience was a good older sister to Bets and me. She didn’t have a say in whom she married, and she seemed to tolerate Matthew well enough. I think she is the smartest one of us, or at least the most adaptable. She watched my dad for years, learned how to avoid triggering him, figured out how to appease him. In a different life, I think she’d have gone to college, become a doctor maybe, or a scientist, something like that.”
“I was told that she did some…disciplining? On behalf of your dad? And Matthew.” Sybil tried to remember exactly what Annabeth had told them down in Georgia.Defanged but not toothless.
“That’s question four, and she’s complicated.”
“Explain please,” Sybil said.
“When you’re in that…bubble, which is actually a very gracious way to saycult, you figure out how to survive. Patience was always the best at surviving.”
“But you and Betty got out.”
“I was kicked out, which probably saved my life, though I never knew if he would change his mind about me, either, so I stayed inconspicuous, tried not to be found. Betty had to run. My dad…” He paused and flicked on the wipers again to clear the bugs. “My dad never would have let her go. The older she got, the more possessive he became of her. Started giving sermons aimed at her. Started changing all of his rules at a whim just because of her. So we planned for it for almost a year—me, teaching her how to get out.” A car crossed the other side of the highway, and its headlights illuminated the wince on Levi’sface. “He was not…” He considered. “He was the worst combination: erratic, possessive and willing to do anything to maintain control.”
“And now you think Betty’s in danger?”
“Yes. Possibly.” He blinked quickly. “I don’t know how dumb she is being. So maybe.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Also yes, maybe. But I also don’t know what else she knows.”
“Extremely vague answer,” Sybil said. “Technically, these are supposed to be answered yes or no.”
“Nothing about my life has ever been black or white. If that’s the case for you, you’re extremely fortunate.”
“Your decision to leave home, that wasn’t black or white?”
Levi’s jaw twitched. “Actually, it wasn’t. I knew I could never become an elder in my dad’s church like my other two brothers had, but leaving all of it behind wasn’t clear-cut, no.”
“Because of Betty?”
“Because of Betty. I knew she wasn’t meant for the church any more than I was. But ultimately, I couldn’t protect her. If you’d known my dad, you’d understand.”
“So youdidn’tstart the fire?”
He turned to face her, the tires overcorrecting just a bit, and they swerved on the empty highway. Sybil thought of Zeke down in Georgia, at his obvious pain when he’d rammed into the armrest. Maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised when he left for Arizona. He had a whole big life outside of their little Insomniacs quartet. She was embarrassed now, two weeks after their fight, that she had expected that she was enough for him to reconsider, to prioritize finding Betty. She checked her phone again, still no signal.
Levi steered them back into the middle lane without answering one way or the other about the fire.
“All right. Well, I found all of your postcards. Please explain.”
“I thought twenty questions were yes or no answers?”
“And I thought you’d never played before,” Sybil said.
“The postcards were some old lark that I’d told Bets about when we were kids. I’d torn a page out from an ad in an oldNational Geographic. Had it hidden under my bed, told Bets we’d do it, get out and see all the places, even though the contest was obviously over.”
So Mark had been right. Sybil made a mental note to thank him.
Despite everything, particularly the anesthesiologist, she found that she no longer resented Mark. Maybe they did the best they could in the circumstances they found themselves in and had raised two brilliant kids who gave fantastic advice, without which, she would not be in this car with Levi, who hopefully was not going to murder her. And who hopefully was taking her to Betty. Maybe life was all interconnected like that. Mark and her kids and Levi and the Insomniacs and Zeke and Julian and Betty. Maybe there were invisible strings tying them all together, and the best thing anyone could do was be tugged along and appreciate the journey in retrospect. She reconsidered. Not just in retrospect. That was like saying she loved a surgery only after the patient was in recovery. In the middle of it, too, that was juicy and exciting and yes, uncertain and sometimes catastrophic, but thrilling all the same. Maybe Sybil had forgotten in the middle years of her life that she could still be thrilled by the simple fact of being alive.
Her phone, resting between her legs, vibrated with a notification. They must have been driving through a spot with service.
